Spontaneous Essays and Spiritist Dissertations Vanity
(Received by Mrs. L, medium)
I want to talk to you about vanity that is blended into all human activities.
It stains every delicate thought; it penetrates the heart and the
mind. A bad plant which suffocates the germ of goodness; all qualities
are annihilated by its poison. To fight against it, prayer is needed; only
prayer can give us strength and humility. You incessantly forget God, ungrateful
people! To you God is only the desperate help in affliction, never
the friend invited to the feast of joy. God gave you the glorious radiation
of the Sun to illuminate the day and the stars, golden flowers, to break
the darkness of night. Everywhere, in all elements needed by humanity,
God touched the creation with beauty. God has treated you like a generous
host would do with his guests. God multiplies the splendor of God’s
dwelling and the abundance of the banquet. What do you do in turn; you
that only have your heart to offer God? Far from decorating it with happiness
and virtues, far from offering God with the premises of your hopes,
you deprive God, you don’t invite God into your heart, unless harmed
by sorrow and bitter deceptions. Ungrateful! What are you waiting for to love your God? Disgrace and abandonment! Before that, offer God
your painless heart; stand up and offer God your fearless love, but not
like slaves on their knees, and when the time of danger comes God shall
remember you who did not forget Him at the time of happiness.
Georges, a familiar spirit
Human Misery
(Received or read in sessions of the Society)
Human misery is not in the uncertainty of the events that sometimes
cheer you up and sometimes knock you down. It is entirely in the
greedy and insatiable heart that always wants to receive, complaining of
others aridness and never noticing its own drought. That unhappiness, always
aspiring above one’s head, is never satisfied by the dearest joys. That
unhappiness, I tell you, is what constitutes human misery. Why bother
with the brain, with its most brilliant faculties, if it is always overshadowed
by the insatiable and bitter desire for things that are always beyond
reach? Just as a shadow floats close to the body then happiness floats
close to the soul, always unachievable. You must not, however, be sorry or
smear your fate for that shadow, that wave-like fleeing and moving happiness
by the intensity and anguish confined in your heart as it gives us
the proof of divinity imprisoned with humanity. Thus love likes pain and
its vivifying poetry that vibrates your spirit through the memory of the
eternal homeland. The human heart is a cup full of tears; but the breaking dawn shall drink the water from your hearts; it shall be the amazing life
to your eyes, blinded by the darkness of the corporeal prison. Courage!
Each day is liberation. March the painful path; march and keep your eyes
on the mysterious star of hope.
George, a familiar spirit
Sadness and Sorrow
(Received by Mrs. Lesc…, medium)
I
t is wrong to frequently give in to sadness. Make no mistake. Sorrow is
a firm and honest feeling that hurts people right in the heart or in their
interests, but the vile sadness is no more than the physical manifestation of
the slow or the torrent blood that follows its course. A lot of weakness and
selfishness is covered up in the name of sadness. It debilitates the yielding
spirit. Sorrow, on the contrary, is the bread of the strong; the bitter food
that feeds on the faculties of the spirit, reducing the animal influence.
Do not seek the martyrdom of the body, but eagerly seek the martyrdom
of the soul. People understand that movement is needed to maintain life
but don’t understand that suffering is needed to exercise moral qualities.
Happiness, or simply joy, is such a brief guest of humanity that you cannot
withstand it without having been crushed, however slight it may be.
You were cut to suffer and incessantly dream of happiness because you are
wingless birds, grounded, looking to the skies and longing for the infinity.
George, a familiar spirit
Observation: These two communications undoubtedly contain beautiful
thoughts and images of great elevation, but they seem to have been
written under the influence of somewhat somber and pessimistic ideas.
They seem to carry the expression of a broken heart. The spirit that dictated
them died a few years ago; he was good friends with the medium
when alive, becoming a familiar spirit after his death. He was a talented
painter, leading a calm and serene life. Who knows if that was also the case
in his previous existence? Nonetheless, all of his communications attest
depth and wisdom. One could say that they reflect the medium’s character.
Mrs. L is undoubtedly a very serious lady, in many aspects above the
vulgar, and that is what attracts the sympathy of the good spirits to her,
apart from her mediumistic faculties. However, the following message
received at the Society demonstrates that she can obtain communications
of much varied characters.
The Fantasy
(Medium Mrs. Lesc…)
You want me to talk about fantasy; she was my queen, my mistress, my
servant. I served it and I was dominated by it. Nevertheless, although
always subjected to her adorable fluctuations, I was never unfaithful. It is
her that still drives me to speak or other things: about the easiness, with
which one heart may be split between two loves, easily misunderstood
and strongly criticized. I consider it absurd, this criticism from the good
bourgeois who like their little vices resolved, which is even more annoying
than their virtues. They only admit what their pruned brains, fenced
by hedges like the garden of a priest, can understand. You are afraid of
what I say; relax; Musset has his own fangs; he cannot be asked to show
the kindness of little trained dogs. One needs to bear and understand his
jokes. There is the truth in their frivolous appearance, saddness in their
merriment, and laughing in their tears.
Alfred de Musset
Observation: One person that had only heard this communication when
it was first read said in a private session that it seemed of little significance
to him. The spirit of Socrates who was taking part in the conversation
responded to this observation, spontaneously writing: “No, you are mistaken;
read it again; there are good things; it is very smart and it has its
good side. They say that this is how one can get to know man. In fact, it
is easier to prove the identity of a spirit from your time than from mine.
To certain people it is useful to have communications of this kind from
time to time.”
The other day and in a conversation about mediums, referring to the
character of Alfred de Musset accused by one of the participants of being
very material, he spontaneously wrote the remarkable communication
below, through one of his favorite mediums.
Influence of the Medium
onto the Spirit
(Received by the medium Mrs. Schmidt)
I
t is only the superior spirits that can irrespectively communicate with
all mediums, keeping the same language in all circumstances. But I am
not a superior spirit, thus I am sometimes a little bit material. However, I
am more advanced than you may think.
When we communicate through a medium the emanation of the medium’s
nature reflects more or less upon us. For example, if the medium is
of that type in which the heart prevails; of those more advanced creatures
capable of suffering for their brothers and sisters; finally, of those devout,
great souls, turned strong by unhappiness and purified by the torment,
then their reflex does good, in the sense that we are spontaneously corrected
and our language interacts. However, if on the contrary, we communicate
through one of those mediums of a less elevated nature we are
then merely served by a faculty as someone is served by an instrument.
That is when we become what you call a little bit material. We talk about
spiritual things, if you want, but we leave the heart aside.
Q – Are the educated, cultured mediums, more apt to receive elevated
communications than those who are not?
– A. No, I repeat. It is only the
essence of the soul that is reflected upon the spirits, but the superior spirits
are the only ones invulnerable.
Alfred de Musset
